Instagram: Not Just for Photo Bloggers

Everyone’s buzzing about Instagram. Even if you’re not a photo blogger, you’ll love Instagram’s built-in editing capabilities that allow you to take any ordinary photo and make it look interesting. Every serious blogger understands the value of a great image. Even bloggers using no cell phones can make creative images with Instagram.
Instagram

WordPress App Lets You Blog on the Go

Having the WordPress app installed on your smartphone will enable you to generate posts on the train, bus, plane or even the beach. You’ve got an audience to satisfy, but you can’t always be pinned to your desk. Not to mention, sometimes the best inspiration comes when you’re out and about.
WordPress App

Twitter is an Idea-Generating Machine

Many bloggers have long ago embraced the connectivity and idea-generating capabilities of Twitter. Whether you’re Tweeting your whereabouts, responding to comments on your latest blog post or simply browsing the Twitter-sphere for the glorious content other users are sharing, your Twitter app will serve you well.
Twitter

Facebook Apps Keep You Connected

A good Facebook app enables bloggers to publish their latest posts for their friends and connections to see. If you regularly promote your posts on Facebook, you’ll want to be able to continuously monitor your notifications on the go—otherwise, you could be missing some juicy comments or questions, leaving your audience hanging.
Facebook App

HootSuite: An All-in-One Social Platform

HootSuite is a social platform which allows users to post to a number of social networks within a single dashboard. So if you’re an avid Twitter user as well as an avid Facebook user, you can share your latest blog posts with all your social connections at the same time.
HootSuite

Google Analytics: Monitor Your Traffic Stats

Some bloggers do it for the thrill. Others do it to make a buck. Whatever your driving motivation behind blogging, a Google Analytics app will help you gauge the effectiveness of your latest post with stats on where your traffic is coming from and how long readers are sticking around to read your posts.
Google Analytics

Writer App for Android: Write Anywhere

The Writer App for Android is a useful tool for bloggers to start writing a post anytime inspiration strikes. Stuck in the middle of the desert with no pen, no paper and nothing but your smartphone? Die-hard bloggers can satisfy their creative urges and produce their next great post even without an Internet connection. When you’re ready to make it live, simply copy and paste your article.
Writer App

Pocket: Source Ideas for Future Inspiration

Pocket simplifies the task of curating, aggregating and even research—tasks every blogger undertakes on a regular basis. Pocket is a bookmarking application that you can sync to multiple devices. When you’ve come across a really interesting piece before heading out the door to the office, simply bookmark it and read it on the train via your device.
Pocket

CoverItLive Simplifies Blogging Live Events

If you ever blog about live events, you know how challenging this can be. You’re trying to take notes, take great photos and maybe even secure some solid quotes. As a one-person machine, this can prove complex. Thanks to CoverItLive, bloggers can publish live photos and even videos straight from their smartphones.
CoverItLive

Blogsy Makes Cross-Site Updating Easy

Prolific bloggers often contribute to multiple platforms. When you’re trying to manage multiple websites from your smartphone, things can get a little hairy. But the Blogsy app simplifies the process of updating several sites at the same time.
Blogsy

Evernote Satisfies Need for Constant Note-Taking

Some bloggers are the type who need to constantly have a pen and notepad on hand for jotting down all those random, yet incredibly useful, tidbits of inspiration that come to mind throughout the day. Inspiration strikes bloggers in the strangest of places, and it’s often these out-of-nowhere trains of thought that lead to some of the most intriguing blog posts. Evernote has these bloggers covered with a smartphone app designed to mimic the desktop application’s never-ending note functionality.
Evernote

MindMeister Maps Out Your Mind

Bloggers have creative minds and the ability to put thoughts and ideas together in a compelling way. They’re faced with the ongoing task of churning out valuable, useful and entertaining content to keep their audiences engaged. MindMeister is an app that can help you organize all those great ideas and format outlines for articles through mind mapping.
MindMeister

Teed Makes Time Management Easy

Bloggers are often working on multiple projects at the same time. Whether you’re balancing a daily post with a total redesign of your blog site, your projects for other clients or even your dog’s next grooming appointment, Teed is a productivity app to help you prioritize your tasks and stay on top of your busy blogging lifestyle.
Teed

Pinterest Takes Photo-Sharing to the Next Level

Now that you’ve created all those irresistible images with Instagram, you can use them in your blog posts and then share them on Pinterest—yet another avenue for connecting with members of your audience. Pinterest has been growing as a useful platform for content marketing. The more your creative images or logos are re-pinned, the more exposure your content gets.
Pinterest

There are dozens—if not hundreds—of useful apps to help bloggers stay connected to their audiences and keep their audiences engaged no matter how much time you actually spend sitting in front of your desktop. These valuable applications can help you manage everything from idea generation to final publishing.

The post 14 Apps Every Blogger Needs to Stay Connected to Their Audience appeared first on Designbeep | Design Inspiration Free Resources.

The sheer magnitude of WordPress makes it the number one go-to source for those wanting to start up a blog, site or online business. In fact, millions of companies use the popular CMS to interact with customers and conduct business online. Now that cloud hosting has become available, businesses have the opportunity to reap a number of benefits from switching to a fully-managed cloud hosting plan for their WordPress site.

More Security in the Cloud

The prevalence of WordPress sites does have a downside: Since WP is so widely used by bloggers and business owners alike, the CMS is very vulnerable to hackers, spammers and malware. WordPress has certainly had its issues with security in the past, and the threat of attacks or unauthorized access to sensitive information and secretive fields remains a concern.

On the other hand, the employment of WordPress cloud hosting has done some work to alleviate security threats to WordPress sites. This is a crucial security development for small businesses that use WordPress as a means of communicating with customers, selling products and developing their business.

These progressions in WordPress site hosting are due to combining solid hosting plans with cloud technology–and small businesses are benefitting the most. In addition to a higher level of security through protecting sensitive fields (like customer information), secured cloud hosting through WordPress offers automatic plugin updates, custom and redundant firewalls, malware scanning, and more.

Even though the cloud is helpful, it’s not the only answer: the best way businesses can maintain a healthy level of security on their WP sites involves protecting their pages with updated security plugins (like the WP Security Scan), for example. Though the cloud is a great enforcer of security, special attention must be paid to proper updates and scans. Luckily, a hosting provider can take care of this if a managed hosting solution is elected by a WP site owner.

Small Business Site Scalability

If you need more space or more memory on your site, cloud technology can enable added resources instantly–without any downtime whatsoever. If your small business has a busy time of year (say the holidays for retail, or summer for lawn care), then your site can better adapt to an increase in traffic thanks to the cloud. On a similar note, if traffic heavily declines for one reason or another, the cloud can automatically scale to meet a way smaller level of usage.

Cloud hosting through a trusted provider allows for scalable WordPress functionality that can accommodate any resources accrued or diminished in your site’s demands. High availability is guaranteed with fully-managed WP cloud hosting, so that changes in usability or traffic never have an impact on the availability or up-time of a site. Your hosting provider can add storage and memory instantly without any server migrations or downtime.

Cloud-Level Reliability for WordPress Sites

Everyone knows that servers have a tendency to crash, but with reliable WordPress hosting using cloud technology, the results are much less detrimental. Years ago a crashed server would mean hours of relocating and redistributing hardware and software to get a site back up and running. Now if a server crashes or hardware is failing for some reason or another, simple steps can be taken to keep the site functioning at a high level.

Reliable cloud software is maximized when coupled with a fully managed hosting option. Cloud technology makes managed solutions easier and more cost-effective for clients that select optimal hosting plans to maintain their websites. With a fully-managed hosting plan through a trusted provider, business owners don’t have to worry about seeking out or setting up WordPress plugins, backups, updates, or means of support. A hosting company will do all of this with the support of the cloud behind them.

The implementation of managed cloud hosting has opened up so many avenues of better practices for WordPress site owners. Thanks to cloud hosting, sites through WordPress work faster (with 99.99% uptime), and companies offering fully-managed WordPress hosting options and 24×7 support are better able to access WP sites, scale resources, and save their clients’ time, money and website integrity.

The post WordPress Cloud Hosting: Many Benefits for Small Businesses appeared first on Designbeep | Design Inspiration Free Resources.

About 123RF

123RF is a royalty-free digital media library that offers a wide variety of budget-friendly commercial and editorial images, video footage, audio clips, logo designs and illustrations. From its humble beginnings in 2005, 123RF now ranks as the leading global provider of content.They currently have 180 employees and their library currently hosts more than 20 million Royalty-Free digital assets ready at a click of a button.

How To Win

The post Giveaway: 3 x 123RF’s 30 Days Subscription for FREE (allowed to download 5 images a day) appeared first on Designbeep | Design Inspiration Free Resources.

Coding Helps Teach Critical Thinking Skills

We all want our children to learn to figure out problems on their own. Critical thinking is an important skill that needs to be learned at a young age. Learning how to code can help with critical thinking skills. As a child starts to understand how to figure out a problem when they are coding a program, it helps them understand how to figure out problems in general. This enhances their critical thinking skills.
A professional coder probably has one of the most stressful careers. I remember how long it would take me to find and fix coding errors while I was in school. A small error like leaving out a comma or accidently leaving out a space between variables would take hours to find in 200 lines of code. Coders are definitely a patient group of individuals; it’s a requirement for the profession.

We May be Falling Behind

No one wants to hear this, but the United States may be falling behind in the fields of technology and innovation. Many other countries are outperforming the US in digital literacy, and in fact, South Korea has been ranked #1 in the category. The United States didn’t participate in the assessment – the Programme for International Assessment – but it is speculated that the country would have ranked in about the third to middle section. A sad thing to contemplate, however, is that the last time a student from the United States was tested in their digital literacy was 1992. We have come a long way since then, but so have other countries.

If more courses in web design and software development are offered at the elementary and middle school levels, future competitors might be able to outperform countries like South Korea. Digital literacy is not something that you can become an expert in within a month. Especially when it comes to advanced languages like JQuery, Java and PHP. If elementary schools offered fifth and fourth graders the option of learning basic graphic and web design skills. Younger students would be provided with a core foundation that most people don’t receive until the end of middle school or sometime in senior high school. It would also be a way of incorporating a additional art program into schools. Currently, art in school is becoming less and less important. But web and graphic design is an art form and those who perfect their craft in this arena are artists. I dare you to look at the work of David Carson or Jon Hicks and not be impressed
Because of the necessity of these skills in the real world today, it is important that kids learn these skills along with the other necessities like reading and writing.

Learning Programming Means Better Jobs

Our job market is moving digital. One day not too far in the future the majority of the careers available will be tech based. Knowing how to program at an early age will help students get better jobs in the future. Sure, we know that jobs like working for Amazon may require technical knowledge; however, even jobs in the financial industry require a significant tech knowledge base. The more coding and programming a student know, the more likely they are to get a great job.
There are so many reasons that we need to start teaching our children programming. When learning any language, even a programming one, it is best to start young. In addition to being able to learn the language easier, the child will get a variety of great skills from it, as well.

The post Why The World Should Code appeared first on Designbeep | Design Inspiration Free Resources.

Anyway,you know we love to share eye-catching logo designs here and in today’s post,we have gathered mouse inspired logo designs for your inspiration.Here are 22 cleverly designed mouse logos.

You may also take a look at our past logo collections;

• 40 Brilliant Camera Inspired Logo Designs For Inspiration
• 30 Simple Yet Awesome Mountain Inspired Logo Designs
• 35 Cleverly Designed Leaf Logos

Mouse Clip

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KoalaPC

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FashionMouse

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mousyshows

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Mousaic

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SafeMouse

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Mouse Active

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LoveMouse

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Mousesterious

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MoUSE DESIGN

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3mouse

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mouse

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mousetrap bookshop

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Magic Mouse

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Movie Mouse

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lookmouse

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mouse

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Branding in Business

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Full Control Motion Pictures

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Mouse On

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ecomouse

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Mouse

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The post 22 Inspirational Mouse Logos appeared first on Designbeep | Design Inspiration Free Resources.

Today,you can see thousands of different font styles bombarding us and i know it is really hard to choose the best one,especially most of the popular fonts are not free for commercial use.Here on Designbeep,we regularly check for new fonts which commercial use allowed and today we handpicked new fonts free for both personal and commercial use.
Here are 12 fresh free fonts to use independently.although we have checked the license agreements very carefully please check back again because font licenses may be updated by the creator of the font.

You may also take a look at our past free font collections;

• 20 Free and Excellent Retro Style Fonts
• 25 Best Hand Written Fonts
• 33 Free Excellent Rounded Fonts For Designers

Idealist Sans

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Print Clearly

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Manteka

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Aleo

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Terminal Dosis

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Tracks Type

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Johanna

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Agilis

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Cherry Swash

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Genplan

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Stela Regular Vers.

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Montez

Font Source

The post 12 New and Free Commercial Use Fonts [May,2013] appeared first on Designbeep | Design Inspiration Free Resources.

Ponydance

Visit Ponydance

Case 3D

Visit Case 3D

Kick My Habits

Visit Kick My Habits

Dittongraph

Visit Dittongraph

Officina Cucina

Visit Officina Cucina

Dumbo Townhouse

Visit Dumbo Townhouse

Gidmotion

Visit Gidmotion

Manettineno

Visit Manettineno

Windows Of New York

Visit Windows Of New York

The post Weekly Web Design Inspiration #117 appeared first on Designbeep | Design Inspiration Free Resources.

I have spent half of my life working on mind-boggling and very challenging web design projects that have garnered me enough respect and attention among my clients. As an experienced web designer I cannot less agree with the above quote by Lawson. He insists on building sites that are highly adaptable, functional and responsive in every sense of the word.

Why so? Simply because ‘content optimization’ is an intimidating medium. When done properly, it has the potential to drive businesses to any level they wish for. As they say, content is king, but I believe that context is important too as well as the device carrying it. A time will soon come when businesses that fail to build responsive sites will no longer enjoy their user’s attention.

Marketers have realized that people are increasingly using their devices for accessing information about the world. Responsive design helps businesses reach their market and even expand it at a rather exponential pace. An infographic by uberclip beautifully illustrates: the why and how of responsive web design.

A survey by Gartner states that mobile devices will overtake PCs as the most common web access device worldwide and by 2016 PC shipments will be less than 50% than the combined PC and tablet shipments. If this does not ring a bell in your ear, think about it this way – with more and more people asking for wearable or mobile devices you cannot afford to be sticking to the desktop-site-only approach.

In addition, a variety of devices that serve your content will increasingly demand support from your business and you will be left with no choice but to adopt a multi-device strategy. Google recommends that web-masters must follow the industry’s best practices of using responsive web design namely serving the same HTML for all devices and using only CSS media to decide the rendering on each device.

It is interesting to note, what Van Vuuren argues in this regard – that the responsive approach does not take ‘mobile context’ into account. Yet, a simple search returns many excellent examples of responsive design achieving success in a mobile context. Some successful examples of responsive sites are Sony.com and Disney.com. According to Vuuren, the winning factor with responsive sites is its One Web approach – to offer the same user experience across multiple platforms.

It is no surprise to see responsive design making its way to the e-commerce marketing checklist for 2013. CEO of Trighton Interactive Jody Resnick rightly points out that responsive design is an emerging field. As of now it is being used extensively in web applications too and designers and developers are keenly working on to look for new integrations of responsive design with intense testing.

Resnick predicts, “As the internet transforms further into a platform of services and user interfaces that tie those services together, leveraging this technology in the future will allow companies to integrate a plethora of back-end services, such as Facebook, Twitter, Salesforce.com and Amazon Web Services, and then present the integrated data back out the front-end iad layer on a responsive design so the application looks great on all devices without custom coding needed for each device or screen size. No longer are expensive back-end solutions needed to integrate legacy systems with business partners.”

A new research by Nielsen states that teens in the age group of 12-17 years spend seven hours forty eight minutes per month on average viewing videos on their mobile handsets than on TV. While, 18–24 year olds spend six hours thirty six minutes and 25-34 year olds spend five hours twenty minutes. As per these figures the mobile viewing of videos of 12-17 year olds are 18% more than 18-24 year olds and 46% more than 25-34 year olds.

This data shows that device penetration among teens has increased by 45% between the end of 2011 and the end of 2012. The device ownership among U.S teens and young adult households as per Q4 2012 is as follows:

• 12 – 17 year olds – 61% own smartphones
• 18 – 24 year olds – 74% own smartphones
• 25 – 34 year olds – 78% own smartphones

These figures are indeed expressive but what do they really mean for responsive web designers and ambitious brands? You must concentrate your efforts on generation Y by prioritizing responsive design for your business. Users do not need websites for mobile, desktop and tablets separately they need ‘consistent online experiences’ weaved across various platforms.

To Summarize

“My kids are sometimes confused when using the Web to do their homework, as sometimes (often!) two sites will disagree or have conflicting “facts”. It’s a good lesson for them that what we used to call the Information Superhighway is really a ‘communication’ superhighway. It’s good for us to remember that, too, as we finesse our design or finesse our APIs: all the design, all the tech is merely a vehicle for communication. That’s what we’re building”. Quotes Bruce Lawson.

In my opinion, the future is indeed adaptive – the sooner we realize the better we build. With mobile adoption touching the sky brands are left with little or no choice. I feel that this has presented a great opportunity for web designers to better express themselves via different mediums. Not to forget, more traffic and more sales from just a single website that works well on any user-chosen device.

The post Love it or Hate It – It’s Time To Get Responsive Now! appeared first on Designbeep | Design Inspiration Free Resources.

Over the last year, parallax scrolling has been a hot emerging trend in web design. Because it lets page elements scroll at different speeds, the result is an illusion of depth that makes the vertical scrolling experience both stimulating and practical for presenting information. While parallax scrolling isn’t suitable for every site, it’s a technique that can be used to encourage user interaction and exploration. Additionally, the vertical scrolling layout appeals to the user on a 32 inch flat screen monitor just as well as the user on their 320 pixel wide mobile phone.

Here are some examples of how parallax scrolling can be used for effective web navigation:

Bagigia

The Bagigia website shows how Parallax Scrolling can be used not only for effective navigation and encouraging user interaction, but it also demonstrates just how effective it can be for showcasing a physical product. As the user scrolls down, they’re continuously presented with new angles of the Bagigia product and information about product features. As the user continues to scroll, they’re given close-ups of the product, as well as additional detail about the history and design of the product. It allows the user to quickly become intimately familiar the product in a way that pictures or even video simply cannot accomplish.

On a broader level, the Bagigia website is a great example of how parallax scrolling can be used effectively to encourage user engagement – because every scroll produces a new angle and new information, the user is compelled to continue scrolling.
Visit Bagigia

ActivateDrinks

The Activate Drinks website is a great example of how parallax scrolling can be used to create a rich, interactive brand message. Parallax scrolling is not only used here as an effective way to present information, but the colorful bubbles and falling drink bottles also create a level of richness that accentuates the product’s branding.
Visit ActivateDrinks

NewZealand

The NewZealand.com website showcases how parallax scrolling can be especially effective when presenting the user with rich, panoramic photos. As the user scrolls through the site, they not only access new information about things to do and information about booking a trip to New Zealand, but they enjoy rich, full screen photos as well which showcase the many wonders that New Zealand has to offer.
Visit NewZeland

Tokiolab

The Tokiolab website shows how effective parallax can be, even without the use of rich graphics or photos. Using only beautiful typography, tokiolab presents their brand message in a creative, engaging fashion. Parallax scrolling is used here to effectively turn the navigation experience into a slideshow.
Visit Tokiolab

Nike Air Jordan

Parallax scrolling isn’t just a practical way to encourage user interaction or a unique way to present information – it can also be just plain fun, and the Air Jordan 2012 page is a great example of this. This page is also a really great illustration of how parallax’s ability to permit individual elements to scroll at different rates creates a feeling of depth and richness.
Visit Nike Air Jordan

Implementing Parallax Scrolling

While Parallax Scrolling opens up a world of new possibilities for a designer, like all techniques, it can easily be misused. When implemented effectively, parallax scrolling can produce a rich, engaging experience for the user. However, when poorly implemented, parallax scrolling can result in a confusing, unnavigable site. Here are some best practices to keep in mind when implementing parallax scrolling into your design:

Maintain continuity – have a continuous theme running through the layout to tie the design together and visually nudge the visitor along.

Present information in segments – while parallax scrolling encourages the user to continuously scroll, you still want your information presented in slide segments. This makes the information easy to digest, and also prevents overwhelming your visitor.

Be interactive – visitors need a reason to scroll, so make sure to give it to them.

Include call to actions – while the scrolling encourages user interaction, you’ll ultimately want this interaction to lead somewhere productive. Well-implemented parallax scrolling naturally funnels the visitor towards the bottom of a page, so it’s a good idea to take advantage of this phenomenon to encourage the visitor to take further action, whether that’s to buy, sign up to an email list, or simply hit “Like”.

The post Gorgeous Examples of Parallax Scrolling in Web Navigation appeared first on Designbeep | Design Inspiration Free Resources.

In today’s post we have gathered free sunburst brushes for Photoshop users.Having a huge brush library is really essential for designers so why not check out the below high resolution sunburst brushes.Feel free to download and use.Please check license agreements for commercial use.

You may also take a look at our past brush collections;

• 32 Sets Of Free Ribbon Brushes For Photoshop
• 20 Sets of Free Sparkle Brushes For Photoshop
• A Collection Of Free Grass Brushes For Photoshop

Sunburst Brushes 2.0

A solid with a feathered edge sunburst brush collection.
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Rising Sun Brushes

The set incldes 18 rising brushes for free.
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Curled Sun Stripes Brushes

This set consists of totally 20 sun strpe brushes.
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Sunburst Brushes

You can find 24 sunburst brushes.File size is 9.2 MB
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SunBursts

The set includes solid bursts which fade out in the edges with 23 brushes.
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Vector Line Brushes

The set consists of 16 sunburst style brushes.
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Sun Vector Brush

There are 12 sun vector brushes in this set.
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High Resolution Sunburst Brushes

These sunburst brushes are 2000px by 2000px.You can find 10 high resolution brushes in the set.
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Sunburst Brushes

The set includes 20 free sunbrust brushes for personal use only.Made with Photoshop CS4.
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Sunburst Pop Set

A set of sunburst brushes to create beatiful backgrounds.
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Funky Sunburst

The set incldes 11 sunburst brushes.
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Sunray Brushes

There are 9 sunray brushes and the sizes are from 600px to 1200px
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Sunburst Brush

A circular sunburst brush set.
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Rising Sun Brushes

The set includes 9 brushes for Photoshop 7 and above.
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Vector Beams Brush

2 vector beam brushes in size of 1600px 1200px
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Angle Wheels

The set incldes 11 brushes inspired by Japan’s Rising Sun flag.
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Rising Sun Brushes

2500px 2500 px rising sun brush.
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Rising Sun Brush

This set contains 28 high resolution of 1280×1024 brushes
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Bonus:33 Sunburst Photoshop Shapes

33 vector sunburst brushes in set, CSH file.
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The post 20 Sets Of Free High Resolution Sunburst Brushes For Photoshop appeared first on Designbeep | Design Inspiration Free Resources.